Cambridge students visit prehistoric times through Foragers to Farmers program

Wednesday

Jan 21, 2015 at 9:43 AMJan 22, 2015 at 11:38 AM

Sara Feijosfeijo@wickedlocal.com

Emma Blanc, a sixth grader at the Cambridge Street Upper School, took a trip last week to the past — to tens of thousands of years before she was born.

Her mission was simple: Look at fossils from prehistoric times in New England, and report back to an imaginary team of Harvard scientists about the Cambrian, Triassic and Pleistocene periods so they can prepare for the environment they will encounter once they travel back in time.

“We’re trying to figure out what people might see if they travel to this time period,” Emma, 11, said Thursday, Jan. 15, reluctantly lifting her eyes from the task at hand.

Emma was one of approximately 400 sixth graders in Cambridge Public Schools to participate in Foragers to Farmers and Mission to the Past Jan. 9-15, a pilot program at the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology and Harvard Museum of Natural History (HMNH) that ties the district’s sixth-grade social studies and science curriculum with hands-on activities at the museums.

In the Foragers to Farmers program at the Peabody Museum, students created archeology hypotheses, learned about farmers and foragers, discovered how to create nets, and explored net weights and museum collections.

And in the HMNH’s Mission to the Past, kids explored exhibits focusing on the use of rock and fossil evidence, looked at dinosaur footprints to determine their stride length and figure out whether they were running or walking, and recorded notes in a “Mission Plan Notebook.”

“It’s fun,” Adeline Evidolova, 11, a student at Cambridge Street Upper School, said of the pilot program. “I liked all of it. I learned new things, and it’s better than being in a classroom because you walk around, see a bunch of different things.”

The program is the result of a yearlong effort between the public schools’ sixth grade social studies and science teams and folks at Harvard, who worked together to develop a connected curriculum using artifacts and exhibits at the museums.

“We wanted to create a program that gave students the chance to handle real fossils, practice critical thinking skills, and learn from museum exhibits,” said Arielle Ascrizzi, museum educator at HMNH and Harvard Museums of Science and Culture. “At the same time, we wanted the program to be one that all the sixth-grade students in Cambridge would be able to participate in.”

Students prepared for the field trip ahead of time by reading, watching videos and discussing the different time periods during class, and they used the new terminology they had learned to complete activities at the museums, according to Allison Scully, sixth-grade social studies teacher at Cambridge Street Upper School.

“I think they were really excited to be able to make the connections to the different stations,” Scully said of her students. “They had the vocabulary. We had some pre-lessons that we did that were developed by some of our staff and the folks at Harvard, so that gave them the background knowledge that they needed to feel connected to what was discussed and shown.”

For Emma Blanc, it was the fossil section that surprised her the most.

“When fossils go in the ground, they’re preserved with sandstone,” she said, adding that she was stunned to learn that.

Harvard staff and Cambridge Public Schools staff said they hope to offer the program next year.

Contact Chronicle reporter Sara Feijo at sfeijo@wickedlocal.com or follow her on Twitter at @s_fjo.